Never Lose Hope

At least that's what Star Wars fans should be saying in the wake of the Spike TV Video Game Awards. The awards, which we covered extensively, promised to reveal a new Star Wars game. Imaginations ran wild as fans tried to guess what the new game could be. Many believed that it could be the long awaited official announcement of Star Wars Battlefront 3, which has been leaked and leaked but never made official. Instead fans were stunned, for better or for worse, depending on your tastes, with the reveal of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2.

The unveiling of Force Unleashed 2 makes sense, when you think about it. The original game introduced so much new technology with multiple new game engines, and coupled with its huge financial success, it just makes sense for LucasArts to further develop the series. Unfortunately many believe this could spell the end for Battlefront 3. Currently, the game is best described as being in development hell. As it was never officially announced by LucasArts, details are hard to come by and the title has been moved several times to different companies. Starting out with Free Radical (now defunct), the game has supposedly been handled by Rebellion studios and by original series developer Pandemic (also defunct). Its current development whereabouts are unknown and with no VGA reveal, the project seems lost.

As my inspirational title suggests you should never lose hope and that's what Battlefront fans should do because yesterday the series got a lifeline. Chris Marazzo was down to be the casting director for Star Wars Battlefront 3. We know this because he listed the game on his personal website and the good folks over at Battlefront3.net got in touch with him to ask about the title. Marazzo had this to say in response to Battlefront3.net's questions, "Thanks for getting in touch. The Original Title was Battlefront 3 but it evolved into Star Wars Empire at War: Forces of Corruption. However Battlefront 3 is also in development. It was by far the most fun and coolest casting I ever worked on."

So Marazzo is saying that the game is still in development, and that's probably the best news fans of the series can hope for. Marazzo also said he might be able to send Battlefront3.net some storyboards from the game, so fans might have a little something extra to salivate over.

Personally I'd like both games, Force Unleashed 2 and Battlefront 3, to be released. Force Unleashed was a fun game with some wicked cool new technology that will hopefully receive the same treatment as Assassin's Creed II, that is a refinement of what worked in the first game and a tweak and alteration of what didn't work. I was also a fan of the Battlefront series with its simple mission objectives; destroy this, capture that, turn into Mace Windu here, and easy to master gameplay and the 3rd one looked rather ambitious and promising as players will have the ability to travel from footsoldier on the ground to epic space battles in game (although some of that tech may have gone due to the constant movement of the project). Plus, I'm a massive Star Wars fan, so anything Star Wars is a win in my book. It just looks like we are going to have to be patient for this one to come about.